


my world is over one more time

by SilenceIsGolden15



Series: Voltron Oneshots [41]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Autistic Keith (Voltron), Betrayal, Childhood Memories, Foster Kid Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mind Meld, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Repressed Memories, Sign Language, Team as Family, Trauma, Voltron Paladin to Paladin Psychic Bond, just hinted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 01:35:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18084893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilenceIsGolden15/pseuds/SilenceIsGolden15
Summary: The team are stuck in dead space, and only a special kind of sacrifice will get them out. And martyr that he is, Keith is the one who makes it.





	my world is over one more time

**Author's Note:**

> Ok I've had this idea in my head for so long I don't even know anymore all I know is that its finally done its long as fuck its late as fuck and my head hurts so *yeet*

It was cold, and Shiro’s muscles were beginning to tighten with it. 

He sat on the chilly metal floor of the control room, slumped against the wall, compressed between Keith’s weight on his right and Lance on his left. On Lance’s other side was Hunk, taking some of his weight, while Keith leaned on Shiro completely with Pidge tucked against him. 

They were all far too exhausted to move. They’d fought for hours, both on the surface of the planet and the space above, until they were overrun and forced to teleport away. The wormhole spat them out here, and the moment the Castleship emerged it flickered and died. 

The engine, the teladuv, the healing pods, even the Lions-- they were all down. No more heat or air were being generated. 

That was nine hours ago. Coran and Allura were still working to get them moving again, though Hunk and Pidge had long since collapsed. Their distress beacon was activated. And that was all they could hope for. 

Shiro shivered, and Keith pressed an inch closer to him, making Pidge grumble. Mixed with the half-hearted noise was the tip-tap of footsteps in the hallway, Coran’s gloved hands appearing as he pried the doors open for himself and the Princess. 

Their faces were grim. 

“Any luck?” Shiro asked. Allura gave a fierce frown. 

“I’m afraid not. The wormhole left us in dead space-- in short, Balmera crystals don’t operate here. No one knows why, but they just… don’t.” 

“So what you’re saying is,” said Pidge, raising her head, “that we’re stuck.”

Allura clenched her hands together. “We’ll keep trying, but I fear that unless someone picks up our distress beacon…”

“We’ll all suffocate,” Lance finished in a flat tone. 

“Not necessarily,” Pidge replied. “We’ll probably freeze to death first.”

“Thanks, Pidge. That makes me feel so much better.”

Keith clambered to his feet. Knowing how much he needed to move, to do something, Shiro let him go and Pidge took his place, a small warm weight against his ribs. 

Coran exited the room with his head low. Hunk had fallen into depressed silence with none of his usual anxious rambling. Shiro, for want of anything else to do, kept his eyes on Keith as he strode towards the windscreen. Shiro expected him to start pacing; he didn’t. 

He simply stood there, staring out at the void, still as a statue. 

_ That’s odd,  _ Shiro thought with a frown, and called out to him. 

“Keith? What are you looking at?”

At first he didn’t answer. Allura crossed the room to her podium and began more fruitless attempts to activate the Castle controls as Keith stood and stared. 

Then he murmured, oh so quietly, “Ships.”

All of them sat up a bit straighter. 

“There’s someone out there?” Lance asked, tone flirting with excitement, but Keith’s didn’t reciprocate. 

“There was.”

Shiro, though all of his muscles protested, stood up and approached the lone figure of the Red Paladin. 

The first thing he noticed was Keith’s expression. It was mostly impassive, but there was a furrow between his brows, and his eyes seemed… haunted. 

Then he looked out through the glass, and his breath caught. 

“They’re dead,” Keith whispered at his side. “Shiro, they’re all dead.”

They were surrounded by ships. Grey, dessicated hunks of metal floating aimlessly through the abyss, empty and hollow. Most were Galra ships of various styles, but here and there were other hapless victims. 

A chill ran down Shiro’s spine that had nothing to do with the temperature, and he reached for Keith’s shoulder. 

“Come on, Keith,” he said quietly, pulling him away. “We don’t have to look at this.”

Keith went, but his empty expression didn’t change. 

Together they went to the podium where Allura still stood. 

“Is there any chance at all that someone might find us?” Shiro asked, keeping his hand on Keith’s shoulder all the while. Allura worried her bottom lip between her teeth. 

“Ships fueled by alternate sources do exist, but not in great numbers,” she explained without meeting his eyes. “If anyone does happen to stumble across us, it’s more likely they’ll be stuck with us than be able to mount a rescue.”

Shiro loosed a breath. “Ok. Do any of the escape pods have power?”

“Shiro.”

He turned to Keith, a frown tilting his lips when he found him looking back out the windscreen at the ruins. It evaporated when he pointed at one of the ships-- one that was alight. 

“It’s moving,” Keith said as it drew closer to the Castle. “It’s not stuck.”

The ship was small, a mere fraction of the size of the Castle, shaped vaguely like a seed pod with rounded, beetle-like wings. 

It was heading towards them-- more specifically towards the Lion hangar that had been left open. 

“Everybody up!” Shiro called, making the other paladins jump and clang their armor against the wall. “We’ve got a ship coming in and they might not be friendly.”

All of them scrambled for their bayards and helmets. Shiro had just slipped his on as Coran came crashing back into the room. 

“We’ve got company!” he squawked, and they barely had time to clump together in a defensive formation before there were two unfamiliar silhouettes in the dark doorway. 

“Who are you?” Allura called, chin held high, fearless. “Reveal yourselves.” 

The figures moved forward into the dim illumination of the emergency lights. They were tall, taller than Shiro, and disconcertingly thin, covered in layers of brown armor. At the same moment, moving eerily in synch with one another, they both reached up and removed their helmets. 

Shiro was no longer surprised by the green skin or the disconcertingly high and pointed cheekbones or the large bug-like eyes. What did attract his attention for a moment where the antenna both were sporting on their foreheads, three or four inches long with lightly glowing tips. 

“Who are you?” repeated Allura, and Shiro snapped back to attention. 

The aliens both tilted their heads. 

“I am Talxi,” said the one on the left.

“And I am Sersi,” said the one on the right. 

“And we are the Octan,” they said together. 

“Ooooooooooooh kaaaaaaaaay,” Lance drawled with a nervous hitch in his voice, “that’s not creepy at all.”

Shiro was just trying his best not to be distracted by the way the aliens’ antenna swayed, seemingly of their own volition. 

“I have never heard of such a people.” Allura stepped forward a few paces despite Lance grabbing for her arm to stop her. “What do you want with us?”

“You are stranded, are you not?” Talxi asked, their sentence barely ending before Sersi picked it up.

“You need help to escape dead space.”

And together again, “We would be willing.”

Shiro narrowed his eyes, and he moved to join Allura, wanting to edge protectively in front of her but knowing better than to try. 

“How? Your ship isn’t big enough to tow us.”

Neither of their faces changed, and once again Talxi began speaking first, like they had some sort of ingrained pattern to their speech. 

“You are Alteans, are you not?”

“Alteans have teladuvs.”

“We can power your crystal long enough for you to use it.”

“You’re scavengers.” Keith’s voice was cold and untrusting. “You don’t do anything for free. So what do you want in return?”

“The red one is smart, is he not?”

“The Octan are empaths.”

“And we must feed, lest we starve.”

“Oh man,” Hunk whispered hoarsely, “of course we run into creepy emotion eating aliens in the middle of dead space.”

“It’s like a horror movie,” Pidge murmured back. 

Allura straightened her shoulders, cleared her throat, and Shiro internally grimaced. He already knew that she was going to offer herself up and his instinct was to stop her, but the Princess wouldn’t take well to that, he was sure. 

“What type of emotions do you require?”

This time the pair of aliens smiled; there was practically a ripple through the air as all of them shivered in tandem. 

“Any could do.”

“But sustenance is rare outside the reach of the Empire.”

“We need pain, despair, anguish.” 

“Well,” chimed Coran, “in our current circumstance I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

“No, fear is not acceptable.”

“This kind of fear is momentary and fleeting.”

“We need something much stronger.”

“I will volunteer,” said, predictably, Allura. But Shiro couldn’t help himself-- he threw an arm in front of her and interceded. 

“No, Princess, you’re the only one who can operate the teladuv.” He focused his eyes back on the aliens, who stood just as impassive as before. “Whatever it is you do, how long is the recovery process?”

“Several quintants.”

“It is quite an intense ritual.”

“They will relive their worst memories.”

Shiro swallowed hard. “Then I’ll do it.”

“Shiro--”

The aliens moved forward in tandem cut off Keith’s protests. Shiro took a breath and braced himself to keep from flinching when they moved to flank him, trying to keep his heart-rate steady. Allura edged back to give the green faced aliens room, and as they peered at him with their big black eyes and their antenna swayed in his direction, he could only thank his lucky stars that they weren’t purple. 

Until one of them, Talxi he thought, pulled away with a slightly furrowed brow. 

“You are not suitable,” they said, and Shiro blinked.

“Your memories are clouded,” hissed Sersi in his other ear before they both looked away. Their antenna writhed through the air, pulling towards Allura and then away; they reminded Shiro somewhat nonsensically of cockroaches. 

“Perhaps the advisor,” they said together, “he has tasted loss.”

Surprisingly, Keith was the one to veto that idea, saying, “No, we need Coran to operate the healing pods and the rest of the Castle. We can’t have him down for a few days.”

“Then who will you offer?” Talxi snarled. Shiro winced as their fingers, still resting on his shoulder, squeezed his armor down.

“You are all children.”

“We will not assist you if you cannot feed us.”

Shiro glanced back at Keith. He was standing straighter, with his shoulders squared and his jaw tight behind his visor, and Shiro’s stomach dropped through the floor when he realized.

“Keith, no—“

“I’ll do it.”

The aliens released him at the same moment, both gliding towards Keith with vaguely interested movements. Their antenna tugged in Keith’s direction and glowed.

“You don’t have to do this,” Shiro tried, but Keith didn’t even look at him.

“We need you and Allura and Coran to keep things going and the others won’t be good enough. So I’ll do it.”

Talxi peered at the Red Paladin, still moving ever closer like an intrigued predator circling. 

“Yes,” they said, “yes, you will do, you—“ and their mouth dropped open in an expression that Shiro couldn’t recognize but made his stomach twist all the same. Sersi continued the thought without missing a beat. 

“All of that fear and loneliness, all bottled up with nowhere to go…” Sersi reached out and trailed a hand down Keith’s arm, and Shiro could see him tensing his muscles to keep from instinctively recoiling. The aliens could tell, too, and let out simultaneous chuckles.

“Delicious.”

“Shiro?” The whimper came from Hunk, who along with Lance and Pidge had been watching this all go down with a varied cocktail of confused horror playing over their features. It was only one word but his tone said it all. It asked  _ are we really going to let this happen? _

Shiro looked to Allura with desperation welling against his ribs. She was biting her lip and frowning, but wasn’t saying anything to stop it. She was being graceful, he realized distantly, accepting Keith’s sacrifice without making him feel guilty about it. But Shiro couldn’t do the same— Allura didn’t know Keith like he did. She didn’t know what reliving his worst memories entailed. None of them knew but him. 

He couldn’t let it happen.

He hadn’t even taken his planned step forward when Keith’s eyes found him. It was his stubborn glare, the one that he always got right before he disobeyed an order or pulled a complicated move, and Shiro knew immediately that resistance was futile. But he argued anyway.

“You don’t have to. None of us are asking you.”

The Octan, for their part, gave no indication they were listening to the discussion being held around them. They’d pressed themselves up against Keith, Talxi in front and Sersi behind, and their touch was almost reverent as they pulled Keith’s helmet off of his head. Their eagerness was sickening.

“You don’t have to ask,” was Keith’s answer. His cheeks were already paling, his hands curled into fists at his sides to stop them from trembling. “I’m doing this.” 

The other Paladins murmured anxiously to each other. Allura and Coran watched on with concerned eyes, worried but accepting that it wasn’t their choice to make. Shiro felt like he was choking— like he was watching the Blade of Marmora trials all over again, watching from a glass enclosed balcony while Keith was beaten and thrown about like a piece of trash. He’d never wanted to see it happen again.

Talxi closed their black eyes and pressed two fingers to Keith’s temples. His eyes fluttered shut in response, accompanied by a hiss of a breath that nearly made Shiro lunge and break it all up right then, before they spoke.

“Do not fight us, little paladin.”

Sersi leaned in from behind to murmur in his ear as well, “It will be easier if you let us in.”

“We prefer to be gentle.” Their antenna glowed.

“Oh my god this is so fucking weird,” Lance whispered in the background. Talxi’s jaw dropped again as Keith went rigid between them and for Shiro the room began to turn red at the edges.

They must have paralyzed him somehow. Every time Shiro had seen him get lost in his memories he’d lashed out, but now he was still and pale as death, his brow furrowed as far as it could possibly go; until Talxi let out a gasp and a tear streaked silently down Keith’s cheek.

“Oh,” they said, and Shiro didn’t miss how their fingers dug just a bit harder into Keith’s skin, “so alone, so angry, sublime—“

Sersi let out a sound that was disgustingly similar to a purr. “I can feel, I cannot wait for mine—“

For once they didn’t conclude with a sentence spoken together and Shiro was glad for it. He was barely keeping ahold of himself; tears were pouring down Keith’s face now but still he made no sound or movement, just cried silent and still. 

Finally Talxi opened their eyes and slid their fingers away from Keith’s temples, down over his jaw. Keith didn’t react to the touch.

“Your turn,” they said breathlessly, “skip to the middle, that’s when it gets good.” 

Shiro clenched his fists so hard the knuckles on his human hand popped. The other paladins looked to him in alarm, but Talxi and Sersi didn’t so much as bat an eyelid. Sersi pressed their fingers into Keith’s temples and this time Keith squirmed a little, until their antenna glowed and he subsided again, a breathy sob escaping his chest. 

“What are you doing to him?” Shiro found himself asking, his own voice sounding like it was coming from far, far away. 

Talxi shot him an irritated look. “We told you already, Paladin. He’s reliving his worst memories.”

“Twice over,” chimed in Sersi, then hummed eagerly. “This one is good, helpless is my favorite flavor.”

“Jesus,” Shiro muttered. He could imagine which memory they were looking at and suddenly had to put a hand over his mouth to keep from being sick. 

Allura came to his side in a show of solidarity. Shiro barely noticed. The paladins were murmuring to each other in increasingly concerned tones as the ritual went on, especially when Keith began to tremble strongly enough that it was visible, and Coran kept edging closer like he was ready to scoop him up and put him in a pod the moment the Octan were finished, but Shiro knew if he let himself move an inch he wouldn’t stop until Keith was safe and the aliens were either unconscious or dead and so he locked his muscles and stayed as still as he could. 

Deep, measured breaths. Just like before a fight. In, one two three four, out. 

Finally, after an eternity, Sersi sighed in satisfaction and let their fingers fall away. Keith went limp against their shoulder, eyes still closed, and Shiro twitched but didn’t move quite yet. In case they weren’t done. 

“Lovely,” Sersi said, petting Keith’s hair. 

“Are you done?” Shiro ground through clenched teeth. The two aliens looked over at him, unimpressed, then at the same moment shrugged and moved back. Keith’s knees began to crumble the moment his supports were gone-- thankfully Shiro was waiting and swooped in, taking his weight easily as he went down and settling on one knee. 

“We have fulfilled our part of the bargain,” Allura was saying. Her tone was imperious, but Shiro could still detect the slightest tremble underneath. “Will you keep your word?”

Shiro heard the alien’s voices answering back in their three step pattern, but the words didn’t sink in. He was focused on Keith, whose face had lost all of its color, practically grey, and who still had tears leaking out from under his closed eyelids. 

“Shiro?”

He looked up to find the whole team looking at him, expectant and worried. Oh, right. They were waiting for orders. He swallowed. 

“The rest of you go help them with powering the teladuv.” Really he meant  _ make sure they don’t sabotage anything,  _ and if the way the alien’s muscles stiffened was anything to go by they knew that, but they didn’t say anything and Shiro didn’t pay them any attention.

“I’ll be ready to open the wormhole,” said Allura, already moving back towards her console. Pidge and Hunke exchanged concerned glances as they went to show the Octan the way to the engine room, but to Shiro’s vexation Coran and Lance knelt beside him and Keith. 

_ They don’t get it,  _ he thought, biting his tongue.  _ They don’t understand how he’ll be when he wakes up.  _

“I don’t need help,” he said, hopefully not too shortly. “I can take care of him.”

“I’m not an engineer, I wouldn’t be useful down there anyway,” Lance argued back. Coran merely hummed and studied Keith closely, though without touching him.

“I think he’ll do fine without a pod, he’ll just need lots of bedrest.” Coran patted Shiro on the shoulder, gave him a supportive smile, and rushed off to help the others with the teladuv.

“At least let me help you carry him to his room,” Lance continued, “he’ll be too heavy with all of his armor on.”

Shiro released a reluctant breath; unfortunately, Lance was right. 

“Fine. But after that no one goes in without my say-so.”

Lance bobbed his head in a quick nod. “Whatever you say, team leader.” If these new rules or Keith’s condition alarmed him, he didn’t show it. He followed Shiro’s instructions without hesitation, taking up position at Keith’s legs and helping Shiro lift on his word. Normally he would’ve been concerned about leaving the Princess alone on the bridge, especially with their guests still on board, but right now he had no room for worrying about anybody but Keith. 

Lance forced open the door to the Red Paladin’s room, and together the two paladins managed to get Keith into his room and resting somewhat comfortably on his bed. He would be more comfortable once Shiro got his armor off, but first he had to get rid of Lance, who stalled in the doorway.

“Hey,” he said softly, looking like he wanted to reach out and pat Shiro’s shoulder or something. Shiro was very glad that he didn't. “Mullet’s gonna be ok. Just a couple of days rest, right?”

Shiro pressed his lips together in a thin line and went back into the room, letting the door slide closed behind him.

* * *

 

Half a varga later, just as Shiro was tucking the blankets up around Keith’s chin after changing him from his armor to his pajamas, the familiar dip of his stomach told him they’d gone through a wormhole. A moment later the lights flickered back to life and the heating blasted on.

Well, at least the Octan had done what they’d promised. 

Keith was still out cold, so he dragged over the desk chair and set it about two feet from the bed, close enough that Keith would see him when he woke up, but not close enough to make him feel trapped. Then he settled down to wait, letting out content noises now and then as the heat slowly crept back into his aching muscles. 

He could hear the others distantly, puttering about nearby rooms, and between that and the rhythm of Keith’s breathing Shiro was beginning to fade. With his elbow on the arm of the chair and his cheek in his hand, he was half asleep when Keith began to stir from his slumber. 

Shiro straightened up and rubbed a hand over his eyes. It wasn’t a trick his mind was playing on him; those were his legs shifting under the blanket, and his head turned on the pillow. 

Shiro held his breath as Keith blinked open his tear-reddened eyes. 

For a long moment Keith just stared at him. Then he blinked, and swallowed, and asked in the littlest voice Shiro had ever heard, “Shiro?”

Shiro wanted to surge forward that minute, wrap Keith up in the tightest hug he could stand and never let go, but he restrained the impulse and stayed in his chair. 

“Hey, how are you feeling?”

And Keith, practically in a whisper, “You’re alive?”

Tears sprung to Shiro’s eyes. He clenched his jaw to hold them back and made himself answer calmly. 

“Yeah. I’m here, buddy.”

Keith loosed a breath that sounded like relief, and his fingers kneaded at the sheets. 

“They looked at Kerberos,” he said, pausing to lick his lips. “I didn’t… I wasn’t sure.”

Having judged the situation safe (tenuous, but safe) Shiro eased himself out of his chair to kneel by the bed and offered Keith his human hand. Keith took it, curling his fingers gently around Shiro’s like the limb was made of smoke-- liable to vanish any moment. For a bit there was silence before Keith spoke again. 

“Did they power the teladuv?”

A wavering smile curved Shiro’s lips. That as Keith, always so focused on the bigger picture. 

“Yeah, they did. We’re home free.”

“Good,” said Keith, but he didn’t smile back. 

Shiro let it sit for a second, then, “What was it like?”

He felt Keith’s muscles tense, hand squeezing Shiro’s. 

“It… it wasn’t like remembering,” he murmured, “it was like it was happening again. All of it, one right after the other.” He shuddered, eyes closing and brows pulling together, then forced them back open. Shadows lurked in his irises, shadows Shiro hadn’t seen in a long time. His heart clenched painfully in his chest.

An apology was poised on his tongue-- he shouldn’t have let this happen, shouldn’t have let Keith do this to himself-- but the weary expression on Keith’s face killed the words before they escaped. 

So instead he said, “Thank you, Keith. That was very brave of you.”

Keith’s still pale cheeks colored slightly, and with apparently a great deal of effort, turned his head away. Shiro let his metal fingers graze Keith’s hair, and when he didn’t flinch, he let himself run his fingers through, the way he’d learned was soothing through long-suffered trial and error. Keith’s shoulders loosened a bit, but not as much as Shiro had been hoping for. 

“Are you tired? Coran said you’d need bedrest.”

Keith didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, “‘S not safe.”

Shiro knew he wasn’t talking about the aliens. 

“It’s ok,” Shiro soothed, “I’m right here, I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Keith gave a noncommittal grunt. His jaw worked and his legs twitched. 

“Can’t move very much.”

So Shiro helped him-- helped him turn onto his side, back to the wall, and curl into a protective ball before he let his eyes close. The hand holding Shiro’s didn’t let go, tucking it close to his chest, and Shiro let him, sitting on the edge of the bed and petting his hair until his breathing began to slow. 

He didn’t know how long he sat there. He didn’t care. He would’ve sat there forever as long as Keith needed him. 

At length there came a knock on the door, tiny and timid. Shiro glanced down, and determining Keith was deep enough asleep, gently worked his hand free and crossed to the door. The whole team was gathered in the hall, clustered close together with concerned expressions. 

“How is he?” asked Allura, pressing her hands together anxiously. 

Before Shiro could answer, Hunk jumped in, “Can we see him?”

Shiro hesitated and glanced back. He was still so pale, bruises under his eyes, and as he watched began to frown in his sleep. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Come on, Shiro,” Lance pleaded with wide eyes, “just one of us?”

Shiro leaned against the doorframe and considered each of them, one by one. Coran, Hunk, Lance-- all taller and broader than Keith and by his measurement, untrusted. Allura-- who only a few weeks ago had frozen Keith out for his Galra blood, a memory the Octan undoubtedly clawed to the surface. 

And then there was Pidge. 

“Pidge. Pidge can come. But just for a few minutes.”

Her spine straightened, and she reached up to nervously adjust her glasses. Lance gave her a supportive pat on the shoulder, then Shiro stood aside and allowed the Green Paladin into the room. 

He’d never seen Pidge hesitate with anything before. Whatever her goal was, wherever she was going, she always rushed headlong, quick paced and insatiable. Not reckless like Keith, she knew what she was doing, she just never saw a point to waiting or self-doubt. 

Now her step was trepidatious, and after a few steps she paused to hover in the center of the room, hands bunching into the hem of her hoodie. 

Shiro followed her in and let the door slide close behind him. 

“He’s sleeping?” Pidge whispered.

“Mhm.”

“Has he woken up at all?”

“Once.”

Pidge glanced over at him, squinting in the dark, and belatedly Shiro realized his gruff, one word answers were probably freaking her out. So he tried his best to loosen the tension in his shoulders and the vise-like trap of his teeth.

“He was a little confused at first, but he seemed perfectly lucid. Just tired.”

“Ok, good. That’s--” she was interrupted by Keith shifting on the bed in response to her voice, and both of them froze for a long moment while they waited for him to settle again. Eventually he did, and Pidge drew in a breath, and when she spoke she kept herself much quieter.

“I was talking to the others, and we… I guess we were wondering…”

Shiro barely refrained from sighing in exasperation. He knew what was coming.

“We were wondering why… um… why he--”

“You were wondering how Keith could have memories bad enough to stand against Allura’s and mine.”

She blinked, a bit taken aback by his unusual brusqueness, but nodded all the same. Shiro stalled for time by looking back at the figure on the bed. Curled up so small. Practically hiding under the thin Altean blanket. Shiro couldn’t betray him. 

“Pidge, I mean this in the nicest possible way, but it’s really none of your business. If he wants to tell you one day that’s up to him.”

Pidge’s fingers tightened their stranglehold on the hem of her hoodie. “Right, well, um, is there anything we can do? To help?”

His instinctive answer was no. Then he looked back at Keith again and reconsidered. 

“Actually… maybe.”

* * *

 

“A what?”

Pidge’s rapid pace through the halls didn’t falter, forcing Lance and Hunk to hustle to keep up with her. 

“A heavier blanket,” she answered tersely. “The ones in the Paladin quarters are too thin and light.”

Lance huffed. “But I still don’t get how that’s gonna help.”

“It’s pressure, Lance,” murmured Hunk as they hurried along. “It’s soothing, like being hugged really tight, you know?”

“It can help people sleep too. I used to have one at home.”

“Ok, ok, I get it. Heavy blanket equals good. Gotcha. But where are we gonna find one?”

“Allura’s room first. Then we hit every linen closet in the Castle until we find one. Hell, I’ll staple three blankets together if I have to.”

They arrived at the door to the Princesses’ room, and for a moment there was quiet while Pidge fidgeted with the door scanner, trying to bypass the hand scanner. Then Lance spoke again, venturing to ask the question that had been prowling circles in his mind for hours. 

“So did Shiro tell you anything?”

Pidge shook her head, jabbing at the scanner with a little more force than was necessary. 

“All he said was that it wasn’t our business and Keith would tell us if he wanted to.”

Hunk hummed. “He kind of has a point. I mean, as much as we want to know, it’s Keith’s life, not ours.” 

“Says the guy who read my diary,” Pidge grumbled back. Before Hunk could answer the door beeped and opened to them, and the three paladins flooded into the Princesses’ room. 

They took care not to disturb anything else, making a beeline straight for the bed. It was large as they’d expected, and ridiculously soft (which prompted a series of complaints from Lance about their ‘stone cold military mattresses’) but while the comforter covering it was much larger than any of theirs, it was still made out of the same thin, airy materital. So they moved on to pilfering the various stores of linen scattered throughout the Castle. 

They finally found one in the fourth closet they checked. It was a large, fluffy duvet-- not nearly as heavy as the weighted blanket Pidge had at home, but thanks to the thicker material the sheer size of it made it sufficient for their purpose, so they dutifully hauled it back to Keith’s room. 

Pidge knocked softly on the door, remembering how lightly Keith had been sleeping, and held her breath as she slipped inside with their offering piled up in her arms. 

Shiro gave her a wane smile when she tottered inside. She struggled to reciprocate the expression until Shiro took the blanket from her and turned back towards the bed; half of what made this situation so scary was how affected Shiro was by it. His movements were ever so gentle, carefully calculated as he moved to spread the blanket over Keith’s huddled shape.

But it was all for nothing, as Keith startled awake at the faintest brush of pressure. 

He shot upright with a strangled gasp, so loud in the silent room that Pidge jumped and shuffled back a step. Even in the darkness she could see how wide his eyes were, how fast his chest was moving as his heavy breathing bounced off the walls, and her fingers fisted uncertainly into her hoodie. 

Shiro was unmoved by Keith’s sudden leap into wakefulness, remaining still and quiet as Keith apparently just stared at Pidge. After a few moments of nothing he dared to murmur Keith’s name.

Keith flinched violently-- far too violently for what he was reacting to-- his head whipping away towards the wall and his arm jerking at his side as though he’d tried to raise it but been unable to. Slowly, though not slowly enough to prevent Keith’s little jerks and jutters, Shiro sank down to the floor.

_ Making himself smaller,  _ Pidge realized with a twist in her gut,  _ so he’s not so scary.  _

“Keith,” he said again, and the boy twitched. “It’s alright. Pidge just wanted to bring you another blanket. I’m sorry I woke you.” He kept his voice even and measured, comforting, and waited patiently when it took several seconds for Keith’s eyes to settle on the white fabric that was still hanging halfway off of the bed. 

Gulping, Keith reached out with a heavy, hesitant hand to feel the new blanket. Then his eyes flickered their way back up to Pidge. Where there had once been hollow fear was now some hint of recognition, which helped one of the knots in her stomach loosen. 

He opened his mouth and closed it, frowning and pressing his lips together in a tight line. He lifted his hand again just a few inches, palm up, and let it fall towards her, though his expression was still locked in a frustrated scowl.

Pidge looked helplessly to Shiro. He answered with a sad smile.

“He means thank you,” he murmured.

_ Oh. Sign language. _ She looked back to Keith. 

“It’s no problem.” She kept her voice low, but still Keith’s shoulders gave a little jerk at the sound of it. “We hope you like the blanket.”

Keith gave it a little half-hearted tug, and when it wouldn’t budge, hunched his shoulders around his ears. Shiro took over and settled it more evenly over his legs, though the whole time Keith was subtly leaning away from him. Never once did he take his eyes off of Pidge. 

“Alright,” said Shiro when he was done, “think you’re good to go back to sleep?”

Keith frowned but nodded, and Pidge didn’t wait for Shiro to dismiss her. She went to the door herself, waiting for it to slide shut behind her while she stared at Lance and Hunk’s questioning expressions. 

The door shut. She took a step forward. 

And promptly burst into tears. 

* * *

The next few days were hard. Really, really hard. 

Keith hated every second of it. 

He thought he’d gotten over all of this. This feeling of such encompassing fear and weakness-- he thought he’d left it behind. In the past where it belonged. But he was wrong. It was back with a vengeance, kicking white hot adrenaline down his spine every time the slightest movement caught the corner of his eye, every time sound emerged from the silent cocoon of his bedroom, every time something unexpected brushed against his skin. And with the adrenaline, instead of the fight he’d trained himself to respond with over the years, came panic. Panic, and flinching, and the urge to hunker down and cower and not budge an inch until the threat passed him by. 

It made him furious. 

He never wanted to be this again. This scared, cringing thing for people to look on with useless pity. But he couldn’t help it anymore. Logically he knew all the things those aliens had looked at had happened years ago, that he was deep in space hundreds of light years from any of the people who used to hurt him. But his brain didn’t care-- it insisted danger, and forced wariness onto weariness. 

Shiro tried to explain it to him during those first few days. When Keith was so full of self-hate and rage that he would tremble and his nails would turn on his own flesh, Shiro would hold his hands gently and try to explain how he’d been retraumatized, how the Octan had made him relive everything and so his brain thought it was real, how he was trying to protect himself. 

He knew how it worked. He’d heard it all the first time, in therapy. He just wanted it to be gone again. 

Shiro, as ever, counseled patience.  _ Patience yields focus.  _ It would get better with time. He just had to let it run its course, not try to force it too quickly. Which helped, but didn’t stop Keith from insisting on leaving his room after three days. 

His limbs were still kinda weak and noodley, and even his hair falling in his eyes occasionally caused him to jump, but despite Shiro’s protests Keith steeled himself and bundled up in the duvet Pidge had brought him to trudge down to the lounge. 

The lounge was a lot further from the crew quarters than he remembered. By the time he got there his legs had gone to jelly again and he collapsed onto the couch, quietly seething at his lack of control over his own limbs. 

He’d told Shiro to give him an hour before coming to join him (or carry him back to bed, as the case may be), and he didn’t regret it. It was nice to be out of his room, which had become essentially a gloomy cave of despair, and despite the tingling in his legs he was glad he’d walked down himself. Here, curled up in the big blanket in the corner of the lounge sofa, he wasn’t a helpless, frightened, self-protectingly angry child. 

Out here, having come here himself under his own power and volition, he almost felt like Keith the Red Paladin again, instead of Keith the Traumatized Orphan. 

He tilted his head back against the couch cushion and closed his eyes. 

He sat there for awhile. The ship hummed along underneath the metal floor, a comforting rumble. He swore the lounge must be closer to the turbines or something; the hum wasn’t as strong in his room. 

He was halfway asleep when he heard the door to his right slide open. 

His muscles tightened so quickly it was painful; he would’ve winced if his face hadn’t frozen itself into impassivity. For a long, terrifying moment he couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t move, all he could do was listen as the footsteps came to a halt. 

“Oh!” exclaimed a voice, and he flinched with a sharp twinge in his neck. “Keith. I wasn’t expecting to see you out and about.”

Cautiously, he slitted his eyes open. The footsteps continued, growing closer, until the person crossed into his line of sight. 

Oh. Hunk.

Part of his brain wanted to relax. He knew Hunk, Hunk was gentle, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. But the other part argued back-- after all, he didn’t know Hunk that well. It’s not like they were  _ friends.  _ And Hunk was big, and strong, way bigger and stronger than Keith even on a good day. If he decided to do something, there was little Keith could do to fight back. 

While he’d been arguing with himself Hunk had come around the end of the sofa and taken a seat. He’d left a respectable distance of three or four feet between them, his expression open and (on the surface, at least), kind. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked. Keith managed a grunt, then squirmed a bit uncomfortably under his blanket, his cheeks flushing. 

It was always like this after a nightmare, or a flashback, or whatever the fuck-- his throat constricting around words like a vice. He couldn’t let it. He was better, he was  _ getting better,  _ damnit, he could do this.

He swallowed once, twice, and opened his mouth. 

“I’m ok,” is what came out, and he could’ve cheered. “Better.”

Hunk positively beamed at him. “That’s great! It’s been way too quiet without you around, buddy.”

Keith couldn’t fight his answering smile. 

“Anyway,” Hunk leaned back against the sofa, casual, “I came in here to work on something, is it cool with you if I do that?”

Keith didn’t understand why his opinion should matter, but he appreciated being asked, and nodded his head in assent. 

For the remainder of his allotted hour he and Hunk sat together in companionable silence, broken only by Hunk’s occasional murmurs as he tried to figure out what he was working on with his tablet. Slowly, gradually, Keith began to relax, and once again was on the precipice of a doze when Shiro came to collect him. 

Keith didn’t register his presence immediately. It wasn’t until Hunk spoke up to greet him that Keith began to rouse, and when he did it was to Shiro’s warm grin. 

“Hey, Keith. Comfy?”

With a yawn, he nodded. 

“Wanna stay a bit longer?”

Another nod. 

“Mind if I join?”

Shake, and he pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. 

So Shiro sat between him and Hunk, letting Keith worm his feet into his lap, and for the first time in what felt like forever, he was completely and utterly at peace.

* * *

 

Keith was getting better, and no one was happier about it than Shiro. 

He’d been so scared when the Octan had first gotten their hands on him. That re-experiencing things so viscerally would force a complete reset, put Keith back where he’d been so many years ago, undoing years of hard work.

But, to his pleasant surprise, he was ok. By the seventh day he was insisting on joining the team for training again, and he leapt right back in without hesitation. Of course there were still moments when he’d freeze, times when words refused to voice themselves, but he was managing it. 

A week and a half after escaping dead space, Shiro finally allowed himself to believe that Keith would be ok. 

After all of his experiences, Shiro really should’ve known better.

* * *

 

It happened almost exactly two weeks after their run in with the Octan. They were in the middle of training, Keith finishing up a bout with the gladiator. 

He ended the battle with a flourish, sweeping his bayard through the bots midriff in a graceful arc and coming out the other side facing the others, breathing hard and making his trademark smirk as the bot dissolved behind him. 

Hunk and Pidge cheered him on. Shiro gave him a proud smile. And Lance, after a moment of awe, loudly proclaimed he could do it faster with his gun. Keith’s smirk deepened, and he opened his mouth to argue back.

Then Shiro blinked, and when he looked again Keith had gone paper white, his smirk falling away as his eyes widened. The other paladins immediately quieted, all of them assuming this was another attack, and fell back to give Shiro room to deal with it. 

But before Shiro could do anything at all, Keith let out a strangled sound and began to crumble. 

His body reacted, swooping in to guide him into a slow descent rather than a topple, but inside his mind was racing. This wasn’t a flashback. Keith didn’t fall down when he had flashbacks. If he moved at all it was to run away. 

He knew it instinctively. Something was very wrong. 

“Lance,” he ordered over the paladins anxious murmuring, “run and get Coran and Allura, now.”

Lance instantly obeyed. 

Shiro didn’t dare take his gaze from Keith’s face. He talked to him, tried to get him to answer and tell them what was wrong, but despite his efforts Keith’s eyes sagged shut, and one by one his muscles went lax until Shiro was supporting his deadweight and had to lay him on the training room floor. 

In his far away haze, Shiro managed to follow his training and check vitals. His heartbeat was fine, still slowing from the fight with the Gladiator, and he was breathing easily. But there was cold sweat breaking across his pale brow, even though he felt no warmer to the touch than before, and Shiro couldn’t wake him up. 

He didn’t hear the incoming footsteps so much as felt them, vibrating in the floor, and a moment later he was being shuffled aside as Coran and Allura arrived. Mechanically, Shiro rattled off what he’d discovered.

Coran listened with a grim expression until he finished, then bent to do his own examination. 

“Well?” demanded Pidge from the background, “What’s wrong with him? Did he pass out from a panic attack or something?”

Coran shook his head. “It’s very strange, I can find no physical reason for him to have lost consciousness.” 

“Let me try.” The Princess shifted upward, gingerly pulling Keith’s helmet from his head and setting it to the side. Everyone watched with bated breath as she pressed her fingertips to his temples and shut her eyes tight. 

Where their skin touched there was a slight white glow, and Allura hissed in an angry breath.

“It’s the Octan,” she said, spitting out the name as though the taste offended her, and when her eyes opened they burned with sapphire rage. “They’re still feeding on him.”

Shiro gaped at her. Thankfully, Hunk saved him from having to think of how to respond. 

“But how? I thought they were gone!”

Allura shook her head, nose crinkled in disdain, and without a word closed her eyes again. They waited in ever-growing tension, Shiro holding onto Keith so tightly he had to check himself lest he break the younger boy’s fingers. 

_ Of course they would betray us, of course, they’re scavengers, how could I have trusted them, how could I have let this happen, why didn’t I see this coming-- _

Suddenly Allura let out a pained gasp and yanked her fingers away from Keith as though she’d been burned, making the rest of them almost jump. 

“Allura?” asked Lance, shuffling forward a few steps, “What’s wrong?”

She clenched her hands into fists at her knees. 

“They locked me out! Those quiznacking sons of yalmors!”

Dimly, Shiro heard Pidge say, “They can do that?” but his attention was fixed on Allura as she fumed. She was staring down at Keith, brows pulled together in an angry grimace, and her fists shook. 

“They-- the last time, while we were in dead space, they must have…” she paused and took a breath to calm herself before raising her eyes to Shiro’s. “They left anchor points in his mind. So that they could feed from him again after we were gone.”

“They can  _ do that? _ ”

Again, Shiro ignored Pidge. He was already skipping right to the end, if only in an attempt to keep himself from outright panicking. 

“How do we make them stop?”

Allura’s expression turned pained. “I tried, but they locked me out of Keith’s mind. While they’re feeding they have unlimited access to his quintessence-- if I tried to break through forcefully, they could kill him using it to keep me out.”

“Wait, Princess,” said Coran, “what about the paladin bond?”

Her eyes immediately brightened. “Of course, the paladin bond!” Before Shiro had to ask she’d turned back to him, face alight with sudden hope. “The bond between Paladins of Voltron is the strongest in the universe-- they wouldn’t be able to keep any of you out if they tried! They may not even notice you’re there until it’s too late! Coran, fetch the headsets!”

Coran was halfway to his feet before Shiro managed to say, “Wait.”

Everything stopped. 

“What do you mean  _ wait?”  _ Lance squawked. “Keith is stuck reliving his  _ worst memories  _ and you’re telling us to  _ wait?!” _

“Yes,” Shiro answered shortly, making Lance silent through pure shock. “I should go in alone. Keith doesn’t-- he wouldn’t want all of you to see.”

The group grew solemn after he said that. If he’d had the presence of mind to guess he would have assumed the other paladins were exchanging sad glances, but as it was he was still looking at Allura, who was gazing back with the same consideration. 

“Princess?” 

She didn’t respond immediately to Coran’s prod, until eventually she sighed and said, “Shiro. I understand that you’re looking out for Keith’s best interests. But there’s no time. I saw at least four anchors-- too many for you to do in time.”

Shiro’s chest tightened painfully.

“In time?” Hunk stammered. “In time for what?”

For one of the first times Allura’s eyes lifted to the others, still crowded around their fallen teammate. 

“It’s not just his memories they’re feeding on. They may believe that, but really what they’re consuming is his quintessence. They just use the memories and emotions as a vehicle for the energy. That’s why he was so weak for so long. If we take too long, it’s very possible Keith could die.”

Shiro’s breath came out in a heave. 

This felt wrong. He’d promised Keith a long time ago that he’d never tell anyone anything he knew without his express permission. But this was life and death, and if Shiro couldn’t do it alone…

“Alright,” he said after a moment of contemplation that felt both too long and not long enough. “We’ll all do it.” 

Allura pushed herself to her feet as Coran dashed from the room. “We begin at once.”

* * *

 

Not more than two minutes later they were all seated around Keith’s body, their training headsets planted on their foreheads as Allura prepared to send them into his mindscape. Shiro still maintained his grip on Keith’s right hand as well as he could. 

If he let go, he could lose him forever.

“Is everyone ready?” Allura asked, and one by one, all of them nodded, determination shining in every pair of eyes. “Remember, no matter what you see, don’t get distracted. Find the anchor and destroy it.”

“What are we looking for?” questioned Hunk with an anxious frown. “What do they anchors look like?”

Allura clasped her hands before her. “They’ll be an object or person in the environment, something with emotional significance.”

Shiro took a practiced, calming breath. If he was going to do this right, if he was going to actually help Keith, he needed to keep himself in check. 

_ Patience yields focus.  _

“Good luck, Paladins.”

Shiro closed his eyes.

* * *

 

Pidge wasn’t sure what she was going to see when she went into Keith’s mindscape. When she opened her eyes to find herself standing outside the Garrison she was a bit surprised, only to chastise herself for it. Keith had gone to the Garrison, that was where he met Shiro, why should she be shocked it was a place he attached emotions to?

That said, it didn’t quite look like the Garrison she remembered. The whole place was washed of all color, leaving the normally white and orange hallways and buildings in varying shades of grey. She was outside the main administrative building, and even the sky overhead and the desert dust was all in grayscale. Which made it easy to find Keith, a splash of gaudy color in his orange Garrison uniform, kneeling before something in front of the building. 

Her footsteps echoed loudly like gunshots as she strode forward, but Keith didn’t react at all. And when she finally reached his side, she understood why.

It was an altar. A memorial, really, several shelves of flowers and lit candles piled against the front of the building. Here and there were picture frames, and though some were the same shade as the rest of the landscape, some here and there were blips of color.

They were pictures of Shiro.

Pidge hissed in a breath. She’d seen this before, all over the news when it broke about the Kerberos mission and the weeks afterward-- the memorial the school had put up to their fallen officers. She’d never been to visit it, she’d been too laser focused on finding out what had  _ really  _ happened. But here was Keith, kneeling before it in smothering silence.

She knelt beside him, and unsure of what she would find, snuck a look at his face. It was surprisingly blank and flat, almost emotionless except for the tear tracks streaming down to the collar of his uniform. 

“Keith?” she tried. Her voice came out a bit muffled to her ears, so when he didn’t react, she repeated herself louder. But he didn’t respond, and with a bit of a frustrated huff, she turned back to the memorial. 

Knowing what she knew about the cover-up, about what had actually happened to Shiro, it made her a little sick to look at. 

“He’s not gone.” She didn’t know why she said it-- she was pretty sure Keith couldn’t hear her. 

Until, without turning his head, he answered dully, “Yes he is.”

For once Pidge didn’t waste time trying to puzzle out the wheres and whys and hows. Keith could hear her now, and that was good enough to argue with. 

“How do you know? They don’t have any proof.”

Keith, or whatever mind/memory/vision version of Keith this was, gave a forlorn sigh. “People don’t come back.” His tone was world weary, brow-beaten, resigned, every damn synonym for “sad and tired of it”, and it was so much different from what she was used to from him that it almost sparked panic. 

Somehow, that turned into anger. 

With a quick scan of the memorial she found a picture of her brother, and directing an angry finger at it, spat, “That’s my brother.”

Keith didn’t react. Pidge got to her feet. 

“He went up there too, and I  _ know  _ he’s not dead. I know it, and I’m going to find out what happened to him.”

Keith shook his head. “Don’t give yourself false hope. It’s not worth it.” He said it in his same dead tone, and for some reason that made Pidge burn. 

“This is all a lie!” she shouted, gesturing to the memorial. Her voice was almost as loud now as her footsteps had been, but still Keith didn’t seem moved.

With a sudden angry screech, she spun on her heel and swept everything off of the top shelf of the memorial in one movement, sending candles clattering to the ground and flower petals scattered in the air. One of the colored picture frames, the one of Shiro, shattered on the concrete. 

And her eyes sprung open.

* * *

 

When Hunk opened his eyes in a kitchen, at first he thought the headband had somehow malfunctioned and sent him into his own mindscape instead of Keith’s. It was a smallish home kitchen, the whole room in black and white like an old TV set, but what really caught his attention was how hollow the place felt. The house was empty, clearly, but even the emptiness somehow felt ominous, and he hunched in his shoulders without even thinking about it. 

The quiet squeak of a floorboard drew his eyes to the left, to the staircase he’d just now noticed, and the only colored thing in the room creeping down it; a young kid in a red shirt.

“Oh, my god,” he whispered, staring with wide eyes at what was apparently a  _ seriously adorable  _ child rendering of Keith. Keith apparently couldn’t see him, as he crept down the staircase a single step at a time, wary eyes darting everywhere but never landing on Hunk, until he reached the cracked tile floor. 

Then he bolted, scurried across the room to one of the counters, and Hunk instinctively stepped back and out of the way when the child crossed his path. 

_ You need to focus,  _ he tried to remind himself,  _ go find the anchor,  _ but there was something about Keith as a kid that captivated him. Maybe it was how small he was. Maybe it was that familiar mop of dark hair that was somehow still cut into enough of a mullet to make Lance scoff. Maybe it was the determined expression that crossed his face as he hauled himself up onto a counter that he could barely see over, an expression Hunk had seen many times on the training deck and in battle, right before he did something risky.

The thought sends chills prickling over his arms. What about this situation could be risky to someone so young?

Baby Keith had raised himself up on his knees now, leaning back a bit precariously as he swung the cabinet open. In the very back of the gray shadowed space was another jolt of color in the form of a yellow box of crackers. Keith’s stomach growled (concerningly loudly, Hunk might add) and he reached in for it. 

At that moment there came the sound of a car door slamming outside the house, making both of them jump. Keith glanced over his shoulder and Hunk’s breath caught-- his eyes were far too wide on his thin face and shining with nothing short of  _ terror.  _ He looked back into the cupboard, little knuckles turning white where his hand gripped the cabinet door, and with a bit of a sad whimper closed it and began to climb down from the counter. 

Hunk moved without really thinking about it, grabbing the small child with one arm and lowering him to the floor safely. Keith went rigid but by the time he’d recovered from the surprise Hunk had already let him go and was moving on. By now there were footsteps on the porch and he didn’t know why but the sound urged him to move faster, like a pendulum swinging over his head, and he snatched the box of crackers from its place and handed it to Keith. 

Keith didn’t waste time being surprised by the person who suddenly appeared in his kitchen. He grabbed the box from Hunk and, holding it securely to his chest, darted back to the stairs quick as lightning and was up and gone before the front door creaked open. 

Hunk blinked and came back to the training room, crying before he knew why.

* * *

 

Lance didn’t even get time to notice the complete lack of color. He’d been dropped right in the middle of (or, rather, in front of) a schoolyard brawl involving no less than  _ seven  _ kids. And after a moment of baffled observation, he realized it was less of a brawl and more of a six versus one assault; he wasn’t even surprised when he realized who the one was, standing out from the others in his red jacket. 

Keith was on the ground, prone on his belly, one of the kids pinning his shoulders down and another sitting on his legs. The other kids stood in a loose ring around him, one  victoriously over his head, and Lance found himself directly behind that kid.

“Told you I could beat you, Kogane,” the kid gloated, and the others joined in with a confusion of jeers and insults. All of their voices warped in the mindscape, fading out in some random places and pitching louder in others. It gave him a headache. 

Keith looked up, a snarl on his lips even as blood trickled from one of the god knew how many cuts. 

“Only with help, coward--”

One of them kicked him hard in the ribs, and Keith gave a startled shout, jerking against the child holding him but unable to get free. The others laughed. 

Lance could only stare. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with this, where the anchor was supposed to be, why this was being shown to him. Did the Octan know they were here? Maybe they’d dropped him in a random memory to keep him busy and tick the clock down further, or chosen one they knew he wouldn’t be able to solve, or--

Somewhere down the hallway, a bell rang. With jolts and muttered curses and a few parting kicks, Keith’s tormentors dispersed, running in all directions. Leaving him to curl into a ball on the floor, smearing blood over the tile. 

Well, he had to do  _ something.  _ Even if Keith couldn’t hear him, he could at least try, so with a fearful gulp, Lance stepped forward.

Keith immediately coiled tighter. For a second Lance froze, then shook himself.

“Hey,” he murmured hoarsely, “you, uh… need a hand?”

Keith peered up at him with angry eyes and said nothing. Distrust scribbled all over his face like someone had given a toddler a crayon in the color. Losing a nervous breath, Lance sank down into a kneel. 

“It’s ok, I just want to help.” 

He held out a hand. 

At first Keith flinched back from it, but after a few seconds of no pain, cautiously opened his eyes again and seemed to be sizing Lance up. 

He sat there for what felt like forever-- until his kneecaps ached and he could practically hear the clock ticking down in his head. But eventually, and all the time looking like he could bolt away at any moment, Keith reached out for his hand. 

The moment their fingers brushed, Lance woke up. 

“What the fuck?” he said immediately, only to cringe at the looks Hunk and Pidge shot at him. Shiro was still under.

It wasn’t over yet.

* * *

 

The instant Shiro opened his eyes, he knew where he was. A little nondescript house in the suburbs, one story, with a big oak tree in the front yard. 

Nausea pressed at the back of his throat. He swallowed it down and went inside. 

Nothing was in color in the mindscape, so he made sure to search carefully, but found nothing of interest in the living room or the kitchen. He knew it was partially out of desperation that he spent so long in those two rooms. If this was one of Keith’s memories, he knew exactly where he’d be. 

Eventually, aware that he was on borrowed time, he resigned himself and went to the end of the hall, to the door with the knob removed. Despite his best efforts the hinges squeaked when he pushed it open. 

The small bedroom was just as gray and empty as the rest of the house at first glance. But Shiro knew better. He walked around the bed to the other side. There he found what he’d been dreading. Keith, no older than twelve, coiled into a tiny ball and shoved between the wall and the nightstand, hiding his face in his knees. If he saw or noticed Shiro at all he gave no indication. He just sat, practically trembling, as the emptiness of the house bore down on them both. 

Shiro sighed and shoved his bangs back. He was in the midst of considering whether he should stay or go and look for anything that could be the anchor when the sound of the front door opening rang through the building loud as a shotgun blast, jerking both him and the vision of Keith like puppets on a string. 

The door slammed shut. Keith pressed his spine harder against the wall. Heavy footsteps came plodding, plodding, plodding towards the bedroom. Keith shook harder with every step. 

Shiro turned and squared himself up as he faced the doorway. He didn’t know if this was what he was meant to do, didn’t know if his arm would work here, didn’t know anything for sure, he just knew this: he was not going to let Keith get hurt. 

A dark silhouette appeared in the doorway, a slightly darker shade of gray from the surrounding gloom, and Shiro shifted his stance. There was the familiar hum of his arm lighting up and purple light filled the room, illuminating the surprised face of the man before him. 

“Who the hell are--”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence.

* * *

 

It was surprisingly calm when he came back to his own mind on the training deck. Lance and Hunk and Pidge were already awake, still sitting in their little circle around Keith with their headbands off and in their laps. No one spoke when he first opened his eyes-- they all just stared at each other, all of them wondering the same thing. 

It took Shiro a minute before he was brave enough to look at Allura. She had her fingers back on Keith’s temples, her head bent low, and when she raised it…

She was smiling. 

“You did it, Paladins,” she murmured with glossy eyes. “You did it.”

Shiro let his gaze fall to Keith. His chest still rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and gradually color was beginning to return to his cheeks. Still he said nothing… until Coran set a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. 

“He’s going to be alright,” he said, and suddenly Shiro’s throat was tight and his eyes were stinging, and the next thing he knew he was surrounded by the others, all pressing as close as they could in a group hug. He wasn’t the only one in tears or nearly there. The only one who was calm was Keith, slumbering away next to them with just the hint of a smile on his face. 

He was going to be ok.

They were all going to be ok.  

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
